To Sail Beyond The Sunset: The Life and Loves of Maureen Johnson

Chapter 23 - The Adventures of Prudence Penny

It took the opening of the Cleveland-Cincinnati rolling road to nail down in George Strong's mind that my prophecies really were accurate. I was always most careful not even to hint the source of my foreknowledge because I had a strong hunch that the truth would be harder for George to take than leaving it all a mystery. So I joked about it: my cracked crystal ball - a small time machine I keep in the basement next to my Ouija Board - my seance guiding spirit, Chief Forked Tongue - tea-leaves, but it has to be Black Dragon tea, Lipton's Orange Pekoe doesn't have the right vibrations.

George smiled at each bit of nonsense - George was a gentle soul - and eventually quit asking me how I did it and simply treated the message in each envelope as a reliable forecast - as indeed it was.

But he was still chewing the bit at the time the Cleveland-Cincinnati road opened. We attended the opening together, sat in the grandstand, watched the Governor of Ohio cut the ribbon. We were seated where we could talk privately if we kept our voices down; the speeches over the loudspeakers covered our words.

‘George, how much real estate does Harriman and Strong own on each side of the roadway?'

‘Eh? Quite a bit. Although some speculator got in ahead of us and took options on the best commercial sites. However, Harriman Industries has a substantial investment in D-M power screens - but you know that; you were there when we voted it, and you voted for it' ‘So I did. Although my motion to invest three times that amount was first voted down.'

George shook his head. ‘Too risky. Maureen, money is made by risking money but not by wildly plunging. I have trouble enough keeping Delos from plunging; you mustn't set him a bad example.'

‘But I was right, George. Want to see the figures on a We-Woulda-Made if my motion had carried?'

‘Maureen, one can always do a We-Woulda-Made on a wild guess that happens to hit That doesn't justify guessing. It ignores the other wild guesses that did not hit'

‘But that's my point, George - I don't guess; I know. You hold the envelopes; you open them. Have I ever been wrong? Even once?'

He shook his head and sighed. ‘It goes against the grain.'

‘So it does and your lack of faith in me is costing both Harriman and Strong and Harriman Industries money, lots of money. Never mind. You say some speculator optioned the best land?'

‘Yes. Probably somebody in a position to see the maps before the decisions were pubhc.'

‘No, George, not a speculator - a soothsayer. Me. I could see that you weren't moving fast enough so I optioned as much as I could, using all the liquid capital I could lay hands on, plus all the cash I could raise by borrowing against non liquid assets.'

George looked hurt. I added hastily, ‘I'm turning my options over to you, George. At cost, and you can decide how much to cut me in for after the special position we have begins to pay back.'

‘No, Maureen, that's not fair. You believed in yourself; you got there first; the profits are yours.'

‘George, you didn't listen. I don't have the capital to exploit these options; I put eve cent I could raise into the options themselves - if I had been able to lay hands on another million, I would have optioned still more land further out and for longer terms. I just hope you will listen to me next time. It distresses me to tell you that it is going to rain soup, then have you show up with a teaspoon rather than a bucket. Do you want me to warn you about the next special position? Or shall I go straight to Mr Harriman and try to persuade him that I am an authentic soothsayer?'

He sighed. ‘I'd rather you told me. If you will.'

I said most quietly, ‘Do you have a place where we can shack up tonight?'

He answered just as quietly, ‘Of course. Always, dear lady.'

That night I gave him more details. ‘The next road to be converted will be the Jersey Turnpike, an eighty-mile-per-hour road as compared with this fiddling thirty-mile-per-hour job we saw opened today. But the Harriman Highway -‘

‘Harriman?'

‘The D. D. Harriman Prairie Highway from Kansas City to Denver will be a hundred-mile-per-hour road that will grow a strip city thirty miles wide from Old Muddy to the Rocky Mountains. It will boost Kansas from a population of two million to a population of twenty million in ten years... with endless special positions for anyone who knows it is going to happen.'

‘Maureen, you frighten me.'

‘I frighten myself, George. It's rarely comfortable to know what is going to happen.' I decided to take the plunge. ‘The rolling roads will continue to be built at a frantic pace, as fast as sunpower screens can be manufactured to drive them - down the east coast, along Route Sixty-Six, on El Camino Real from San Diego to Sacramento and beyond - and a good thing, too, as the sunpower screens on the roofs of the road cities will take up the slack and fend off a depression when the Paradise power plant is shut down and placed in orbit.'

George kept quiet so long I thought he had fallen asleep. At last he said, ‘Did I hear you correctly? The big atomic power pile in Paradise, Arizona, will be placed in orbit? How? And why?'

‘By means of spaceships based on today's glide rockets. But operating with an escape fuel developed at Paradise. But, George, George, it must not happen! The Paradise plant must be shut down, yes; it is terribly dangerous, it is built wrong -like a steam engine without a relief valve.' (In my head I could hear Sergeant Theodore's dear voice saying it: They were too eager to build... and it was built wrong - like a steam engine without a relief valve.') ‘It must be shut down but it must not be placed in orbit. Safe ways will be found to build atomic power plants; we don't need the Paradise plant. In the meantime the sunpower screens can fill the gap.'

‘If it's dangerous - and I know some people have worried about it - if it is placed in orbit, it won't be dangerous.'

‘Yes, George, that's why they will put it in orbit. Once in orbit, it would not be dangerous to the town of Paradise, or the state of Arizona... but what about the people in orbit with it? They will be killed.'

Another long wait - It seems to me that it might be possible to design a plant to operate by remote control, like a freighter rocket. I must ask Ferguson.'

‘I hope you are right. Because you will see, when you return to Kansas City and open my envelope number six and also number seven, that I prophesy that the Paradise power plant will be placed in orbit, and that it will blow up and kill everybody on board, and destroy the rocketship that services it. George, it must not be allowed to happen. You and Mr Harriman must stop it. I promise you, dear, that if this can be stopped - if my prophecy can be proved wrong - I will break my crystal ball and never prophesy again.'

‘I can't make any promises, Maureen. Sure, both Delos and I are directors of the Power Syndicate... but we hold a minor position both in stock and on the board. The Power Syndicate represents practically all the venture capital in the United States; the Sherman Anti-Trust Law was suspended to permit it to be formed in order to build the Paradise plant. Hmm... a man named Daniel Dixon controls a working majority, usually. A strong man. I don't like him much:

‘I've heard of him, haven't met him. George, can he be seduced?'

‘Maureen!'

‘George, if I can keep fifty-odd innocent people from being killed in an industrial accident, I'll do considerably more than offer this old body as a bribe. Is he susceptible to women? If I am not the woman he is susceptible to, perhaps I can find her.'

Dixon didn't cotton to me at all (nor I to him, but that was unimportant) and he did not seem to have any cracks in his armour. After the Power Syndicate voted to shut down the Paradise plant ‘in the public interest' I was successful only in getting George and Mr Harriman to vote against reactivating that giant bomb in orbit - theirs were the only dissenting votes. The death scenario rolled on and I could not stop it: power satellite and spaceship Charon blew up together, all hands killed - and I stared at the ceiling for nights on end, reflecting on the bad side of knowing too much about the future.

But I did not stop working. Back in 1952, shortly after I had given George my earliest predictions, I had gone to Canada to see Justin: 1) to set up a front to handle business for my ‘Prudence Penny' column, and 2) to offer Justin the same detailed predictions I was giving George.

Justin had not been pleased with me. ‘Maureen, do I understand that you have been holding all these years additional information you got from Sergeant Bronson - or Captain Long, whatever - the Howard from the future - and did not turn it over to the Foundation?'

‘Yes.'

Justin had shown an expression of controlled exasperation. ‘I must confess to surprise. Well, better late than never. Do you have it in writing, or will you dictate it?'

‘I'm not turning it over to you, Justin. I will continue to pass on to you, from time to time, data that I have conserved, item by item, as you need to know it'

‘Maureen, I really must insist. This is Foundation business. You got these data from a future chairman of the Foundation - so he claimed and so I believe - so I am their proper custodian. I am speaking not as your old friend Justin, but as Justin Weatheral in my official capacity as chief executive officer of the Foundation and conservator of its assets for the benefit of all of us.'

‘No, Justin.'

‘I must insist'

‘Insist away, old dear - it's good exercise.'

‘That's hardly the right attitude, Maureen. You don't own that data. It belongs to all of us. You owe it to the Foundation.'

‘Justin, don't be so tediously male! Data from Sergeant Theodore saved the Foundation's bacon on Black Tuesday, in 1929. Stipulated?'

‘Stipulated. That's why -‘

‘Let me have my say. And that same data also saved your arse and made you rich - and made the Foundation rich. Why? How? Who? Old busy-bottom Maureen, that's who! Because I'm an amoral wench who fell in love with this enlisted man and kicked his feet out from under him - and got him to talking. That had nothing to do with the Foundation, just me and my loose ways. I'll hadn't cut you in on it, you would never have met Theodore. Admit it! True? False? Answer me.'

‘Well, when you put it that way -‘

‘I do put it that way and let's have no more nonsense about what I owe the Foundation. Not until you've counted up what the Foundation owes me. I still promise to pass on data as needed. Right now, the Foundation should get heavily into Douglas-Martin Sunpower screens, and if you don't know about them, see your files of The Economist or the Wall Street Journal or the Toronto Star. After that, the hottest new investment as soon as it opens up will be rolling roads and real estate near them.'

‘Rolling roads?'

‘Damn it, Justin, I know Theodore mentioned them in that rump meeting of the board on Saturday 29 June, 1918, as I took notes and typed them out and gave you a copy, as well as the original to Judge Sperling. Look it up.' So clear back in 1952 I showed Justin where the principal roadtowns would be, as told to me by Theodore. ‘Watch for them, get in early. Enormous profits to the early birds. But get rid of all railroad stock.'

At that time I decided not to bother Justin with my ‘Prudence Penny' venture - not when he was feeling bruised on his macho bump. Instead, I had taken it up with Eleanor. Entrusting a secret to Eleanor was safer than telling it to Jesus.

‘Prudence Penny, The Housewife Investor' started out as a weekly column in country newspapers of the sort we had had in Thebes, the Lyle County Leader. I always offered the first six weeks free. If a trial period stirred any interest, a publisher could continue it for a very small fee - those small-town weeklies can't pay more than peanuts; there was no sense in trying to make money on it at first.

In fact my purpose was not to make money. Or only indirectly.

I set the format in 1953 with the first column and never varied it:

Prudence Penny THE HOUSEWIFE INVESTOR

TODAY'S DEFINTTION: (Each column I gave at least one definition. Money people have their own language. If you don't know their special words, you can't play in their poker game. Some of the words I defined for my readers were: common stock, preferred stock, bonds, municipal bonds, debentures, margin, selling short, puts and calls, living trust, joint tenancy, tenants in common, float, load, points, deficiency judgement, call money, prime rate, gold standard, flat money, easement, fee simple, eminent domain, public domain, copyright, patent, etc., etc.

(Trivial? To you, perhaps. If so, you did not need ‘Prudence Penny'. But to most people these elementary terms might as well be ancient Greek. So I offered one definition each column, in one-syllable Anglo-Saxon words that could be misunderstood only by a professor of English.)

Next I offered a discussion of something in the news of the day that might affect investing. Since everything, from weather to elections to killer bees, affects investing, this was easy. If I could include a little juicy gossip, I did. But not anything hurtful, or cruel, and I was most careful not to offer anything actionable.

My next item each week was TODAY'S RECOMMENDED INVESTMENT. This was a sure thing, based directly or indirectly on Theodore's predictions. The same recommendation might be repeated many times, alternated with others from the same source.

I always closed with Prudence Penny's Portfolio:

Ladies, we started this portfolio with one thousand dollars ($1000) in January 1953. If you invested the same amount and at the same time, investing and changing investments just as we did, your portfolio is now worth $4823.17.

If you invested $10.000, your portfolio is now worth $48.231.70.

If you invested $100.000, today your portfolio is worth $48217.00.

But it is never too late to start prudent investing with Penny. You can start today with $4823.17 (or any multiple or fraction), which you then place as follows:

(List of investments that add up to $4823.17.)

If you want to see for yourself the details of how a thousand dollars grows to (current figure) in only (fill in) years and (blank) months, send ($1.oo, $2.50, $4.00 - the price went steadily up) to Pinch-Penny Publications, Suite 8600, Harriman Tower, New York, NY HKL030 (that being a drop box that caused mail to be routed, eventually, to Eleanor's stooge in Toronto) or buy it at your local bookstore: The Housewife's Guide to Thrifty Investing by Prudence Penny.

The hugger-mugger about the address was intended to keep the Securities Exchange Commission from learning that ‘Prudence Penny' was a director of Harriman Industries. The SEC takes a jaundiced view of ‘Inside Information'. So far as I could tell, it would matter not at all to them that my advice was truly beneficial to anyone who followed it. In fact, that might get me beheaded even more quickly.

The column spread from country weeklies to city dailies and did make money after the first year, and quite a lot of money in the thirteen years that I wrote it. Women read it and followed it - so my mail indicated - but I think even more men read it, not to follow my advice, but to try to figure out how this female bear could waltz at all.

I knew that I had succeeded when one day George Strong quoted ‘Prudence Penny' to me.

My ultimate purpose was not to make money and not to impress anyone but to establish a reputation that let me write a special column in April 11964, one headed ‘THE MOON BELONGS TO EVERYONE - but the first Moonship will belong to Harriman Industries.'

I advised them to hang onto their Prudence Penny portfolio... but to take every other dime they could scrape up and bet it on the success of D. D. Harriman's great new venture, placing a man on the Moon.

From then on ‘Prudence Penny' always had something to say about space travel and Harriman Industries in every column. I freely admitted that space was a long-term investment (and I continued to recommend other investments, all backed by Theodore's predictions) but I kept on pounding away at the notion that untold riches awaited those farsighted investors who got in early in space activities and hung on. Don't buy on margin, don't indulge in profit-taking - buy Harriman stock outright, put it away in your safety deposit box and forget it - your grandchildren will love you.

In the spring of 1965 I moved my household to the Broadmoor Hotel south of Colorado Springs because Mr Harriman was building his Moonship on Peterson Field. In 1952 I had tried half-heartedly to drop my lease in Kansas City after Brian had taken Priscilla and Donald back to Dallas (another story and no t a good one). But George had outflanked me. Title to that house was in George, not Harriman and Strong, not Harriman Industries. When I told him that I no longer needed a four-bedroom house (counting the maid's room), he asked me to keep it, rent free.

I pointed out that, if I was to become his paid mistress, it wasn't enough, but if I was to continue the pretence of being a respectable woman, it was too much. He said, all right, what was the going rate for mistresses? - he would double it.

So I kissed him and took him to bed and we compromised. The house was his and he would put his driver and wife in the house, and I could stay in it any time I wished... and the resident couple would take care of Princess Polly.

George had spotted my weak point. I had once subjected this little cat to the trauma of losing her Only Home; I grabbed this means of avoiding doing it to her again.

But I did take an apartment at the Plaza, moved my most necessary books there; got my mail there, and occasionally took Polly there - subjecting her to the indignity of a litter box, true, but she did not fuss. (The new clay pellets were a vast improvement over sand or soil.) Moving back and forth this short distance got her used to a carrying cage and to being away from home now and then. Eventually she got to be a true travelling cat, dignified and at home in the best hotels, a sophisticated guest who would never think of scratching the furniture. This made it much easier for Elijah and Charlene to take vacations or go elsewhere if George needed them elsewhere.

So in the spring of 1965 a few weeks before the historic first flight to the Moon, Princess Polly and I moved into the Broadmoor. I arrived with Polly in her carrying case, baggage to follow from the terminal of the Harriman Prairie Highway fifty miles north of there - I hated those rolling roads from the first time I rode one; they gave me headaches. But I had been told that the noise problem had been overcome on the Prairie Highway. Never trust a flack!

The desk clerk at the Broadmoor told me, ‘Madam, we have an excellent kennel at the back of the tennis club. I'll have a bellman take your cat there.'

‘Just a moment,' I got out my Harriman Industries card - mine had a gold band.

The clerk took one look at it, got the assistant manager on duty. He hurried over, gardenia and striped pants and professional smile. ‘Mrs Johnson! So happy to welcome you! Do you prefer a suite? Or a housekeeping apartment?'

Princess Polly did not have to go to a kennel. She dined on chopped liver, courtesy of the management, and had her own cat bed and litter box, both guaranteed sterilised - so said the paper band around each of them, like the one around the toilet seat in my bathroom.

No bidet - aside from that the Broadmoor was a first-class hotel.

After a bath and a change - my luggage arrived while I was in the bath (of course) - I left Princess Polly to watch television (which she liked, especially the commercials) and went to the bar, to have a solitary drink and see what developed.

And found my son Woodrow.

He sported me as I walked in. ‘Hi, Mom!'

‘Woodrow!' I was delighted! I kissed him and said, ‘Good to see you, son! What are you doing here? The last I heard you were at Wright Patterson.'

‘Oh, I quit that; they didn't appreciate genius. Besides, they expected me to get up too early. I'm with Harriman Industries now, trying to keep ‘em straight. It ain't easy.'

(Should I tell Woodrow that I was now a director of Harriman Industries? I had avoided telling anyone who did not need to know - so wait and sec.) ‘I'm glad you're keeping them straight. This Moonship of theirs - Do you have something to do with it?'

‘Sit down first. What'll you drink?'

‘Whatever you're having, Woodrow.'

‘Well, now, I'm having Manitou Water, with a twist.'

‘It looks like vodka tonic. Is that what it is?'

‘Not exactly. Manitou water is a local mineral water. Something like skunk, but not as tasty.'

‘Hmm... Make mine vodka tonic with lime. Is Heather here?'

‘She doesn't like the altitude. When we left Wright Patterson, she took the kids back to Florida. Don't raise your eyebrows at me; we get along just fine. She lets me know when it's time for her to get pregnant again. About every three years, that is. So I go home, stay a month or two, get reacquainted with the kids. Then I go back to work. No huhu, no sweat, no family quarrels.'

‘Sounds like a fine arrangement if it suits you two.'

‘It does.' He paused to order my drink. I had never learned to drink but I had learned how to order a tall drink and make it last all evening, while ice cubes diluted it. I looked Woodrow over. His skin seemed tight on his face and his hands quite bony.

The waitress left; he turned back. ‘Now, Mom, tell me what you're doing here.'

‘I've always been a space travel buff - remember how we read Roy Rockwood's Great Marvel series together? Lost on the Moon, Through Space to Mars -‘

‘Sure do! I learned to read because I thought you were holding out on me.'

‘Not in those. A little in the Barsoom books, perhaps.'

‘I've always wanted a beautiful Martian princess... but not the way you had to get one on Barsoom. Remember how they were always spilling each other's blood? Not for me! I'm the peaceful type, Mom. You know me.'

(I wonder if any mother ever knows her children. But I do feel close to you, dear. I hope you and Heather really are all right.) ‘So when I heard about the Moonship, I made plans to come here. I want to see it lift off... since I can't go in it. What do you think of it, Woodrow? Will it do the job?'

‘Let's find out.' Woodrow looked around, then called out to someone sitting at the bar. ‘Hey, Les! Bring your redeye over here and come set a while.'

The man addressed came over. He was a small man, with the big hands of a jockey. My son said, ‘May I present Captain Leslie LeCroix, skipper of the Pioneer? Les, this is my daughter Maureen.'

‘I'm honoured, Miss. But you can't be Bill's daughter; you're too young. Besides, you're pretty. And he is - Well, look at him.'

‘Stop it, boys. I'm his mother, Captain. You really are the captain of the Moonship? I'm impressed.'

Captain LeCroix sat down with us. I saw that his ‘redeye' was another tall, dear drink. He said to me, ‘No need to be impressed; the computer pilot does it all. But I'm going to: ride her... if I can avoid Bill long enough. Have a chocolate écláir, Bill.' ‘

‘Smile when you say that, stranger!'

‘A cheeseburger? A jelly doughnut? A stack of wheats with honey?'

‘Mom, do you sec what that scoundrel is doing? Trying to keep me from dieting just because he's scared I might break his arcos. Or his neck.'

‘Why would you do that, Woodrow?'

‘I wouldn't. But Les thinks I would. He weighs just one hundred and twenty-six pounds. My best weight, in training, is one forty-five, you may remember. But by lift-off day and H-hour I have to weigh exactly what he does... because, if he catches a sniffle or slips in the shower and breaks something, God forbid, I have to sit there in his place and pretend to pilot. I can't avoid it; I accepted their money. And they have a large, ugly man following me around, making sure I don't run:

‘Don't believe him, Ma'am. I'm very careful going through doors and I won't cat anything I don't see opened. He intends to disable me at the last minute. Is he really your son? He can't, be.'

‘I bought him from a Gypsy. Woodrow, what happens if you don't make the weight?'

‘They slice off one leg, a bit at a time, until I'm down to exactly one twenty-six. Spacemen don't need feet.'

‘Woodrow, you always were a naughty boy. You would need feet on the Moon.'

‘One is enough there. One-sixth gravity. Hey, there's that big, ugly man they got watching me! He's coming this way.'

George Strong came over and bowed. ‘Dear lady! I see you have met our Moonship captain. And our relief pilot, Bill Smith. May I join you?'

‘Mom, do you know this character? Did they hire you to watch me, too? Say it ain't so!'

‘It ain't so. George, your relief pilot is my son, Woodrow Wilson Smith.'

Later that night George and I had a chance to talk privately and quietly.

‘George, my son tells me that he must get his weight down to one hundred and twenty-six pounds in order to qualify as relief pilot. Can that be true?'

‘Yes. Quite true.'

‘He hasn't weighed that little since his junior year in high school. If he did get his weight down to that and if Captain LeCroix fell ill, I suspect that Woodrow would be too weak to do the job. Wouldn't it make more sense to adjust weights the way they do with race horses? Add a few lead weights if Captain LeCroix flies; take them out if the relief pilot must go?'

‘Maureen, you don't understand.'

I admitted that I did not.

George explained to me just how tight the weight schedule for the ship was. The Pioneer was stripped down to barest essentials. She carried no radio - only indispensable navigational instruments. Not even a standard pressure suit- just a rubber acceleration suit and a helmet. No back pack - just a belt bottle. Open the door, drop a weighted flag, grab some rocks, get back in.

‘George, this doesn't sound to me like the way to do it. I won't tell Woodrow that - after all, he's a big boy now' - assumed age, thirty-five; true age, fifty-three - ‘but I hope Captain LeCroix stays healthy.'

Another of those long waits in which George pondered something unpleasant - ‘Maureen, this is utter, Blue Star secret. I'm not sure anyone is going to fly that ship.'

‘Trouble?'

‘Sheriff trouble. I don't know how much longer I can hold off our creditors. And we haven't anywhere else to rum. We've pawned our overcoat so to speak.'

‘George, lei me see what I can do.'

He agreed to live in my apartment and look after Princess Polly while I was away - okay with Princess Polly, as she was used to him. I left for Scottsdale in the morning, to see Justin.

‘Look at it this way, Justin. How bad will the Foundation be hurt if you let Harriman Industries collapse?'

‘The Foundation would be hurt. But not fatally. We would be able to resume full subsidy in five years, ten at the outside. Maureen, one thing is certain: a conservator of other people's money must never throw good money after bad.'

Eight million was the most I could squeeze out of him, and I had to guarantee it. Half of it was in CDs some of which had due dates as long as six months away. (Bui a certificate of deposit can always be used in place of cash, although it may cost you points.)

To accomplish that much I had, first, to tell Justin that he would never get another ‘Theodore' tip out of me if he didn't produce the money, and, second, that if he laid the money on the table, I would place beside it a full and complete transcript of those notes I had taken in the middle of the night on 29 June 1918.

In the Broadmoor the next morning George would not accept the money from me but took me to Mr Harriman, who seemed detached, barely able to recognise me, until I said, ‘Mr Harriman, I want to buy some more participation in the Lunar launching.'

‘Eh? I'm sorry, Mrs Johnson; there is no more participation stock for sale. That I know of.'

‘Then let me put it this way. I would like to lend you eight million dollars as a personal loan without security:

Mr Harriman looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. He had grown gaunt since the last time I had seen him and his eyes burned with fanatic fervour - he made me think of those Old Testament prophets.

He studied me, then turned to George. ‘Have you explained to Mrs Johnson what a risk she would be taking?'

George nodded glumly. ‘She knows.'

‘I wonder. Mrs Johnson, I'm cleaned out and Harriman Industries is a hollow shell - that's why I haven't called a directors' meeting lately. I would have to explain to you and to the other directors the risks I've been taking. Mr Strong and I have been trying to hold things together on jawbone and sheer nerve, long enough to get the Pioneer off her pad and into the sky. I haven't given up hope... but, if I take your money and I am forced into bankruptcy and my senior company into receivership, my note to you could not be in a preferred position. You might get three cents on the dollar; you might not get anything.'

‘Mr Harriman, you are not going to be bankrupt and that tall ship out there will fly. Captain LeCroix will land on the Moon and return safely'

He smiled down at me. It's good to know that you have faith in us.'

‘It's not just faith; I'm certain. We can't fail now for the lack of a few pennies. Take the money and use it. Pay it back when you can. Not only will Pioneer fly, you also will send many ships after her. You are manifest destiny in person, sir! You will found Luna City... freeport for the Solar System!'

Later that week George asked me if I wanted to be in the blockhouse during the launching - Mr Harriman had said to invite me. I had already considered it, knowing that I could demand it if I cared to push it.

‘George, that's not the best place to watch the lift-off, is it?'

‘No. But it's the safest. It's where the VIPs will be. The Governor. The President if he shows up. Ambassadors.'

‘Sounds claustrophobic. George, I've never been much interested in the safest place... and the few VIPs I've met struck me as hollow shells, animated by PR men. Where are you going to be?'

‘I don't know yet. Wherever Delos needs me to be.'

‘So I figured. You are going to be too busy to have me hanging on your arm -‘

‘It would be a privilege, dear lady, But -‘

‘- you are needed elsewhere. Where is the best view? If you weren't busy, where would you watch it?'

‘Have you visited the Broadmoor Zoo?'

‘Not yet. I expect to. After the lift-off.'

‘Maureen, there is a parking lot at the zoo. From it you would have a dear view to the east from the spot about fifteen hundred feet higher than Peterson Field. Mr Montgomery has arranged with the Hotel to place some folding chairs there. And a radio link. Television. Coffee. If I weren't busy, that's where I would be.'

‘So that's where I will be.'

Later that day I ran across my son Woodrow in the lobby of the Broadmoor. ‘Hi, Mom! They got me working.'

‘How did they manage that?'

‘I didn't read my contract carefully enough. This is "educational and public communication activity associated with the Moonship" - meaning I have to set this thing up to show people how the ship works, where it will go, and where the diamonds are on the Moon.'

‘Are there diamonds on the Moon?'

‘We'll let you know later. Come here a sec.' He led me away from the crowd in the lobby into a side hall by the barber shop. ‘Mom,' he said quietly, ‘if you want to do it, I think I have enough bulge around here to get you into the blockhouse for the lift-off'

Is that the best place to sec it?'

No, it's probably the worst. It'll be hot as a June bride, because the air conditioning isn't all that good. But it's the safest place and it's where the high brass will be. Visiting royalty. Party chairmen. Mafia chiefs.'

‘Woodrow, where is the best place to watch? Not the safest ‘

‘I would drive up Cheyenne Mountain. There is a big paved parking lot outside the zoo. Come back into the lobby; I want to show you something.'

On a giant (four-foot) globe that made my mouth water, Woodrow showed me the projected path of the Pioneer.

‘Why doesn't it go straight up?'

‘Doesn't work that way. She goes cast and makes use of the Earth's rotation... and unloads all those extra steps. The bottom one, the biggest one, number five, drops in Kansas.'

‘What if it landed on the Prairie Roadway?'

‘I'd join the Foreign Legion... right behind Bob Coster and Mr Ferguson. Honest, it can't, Mom. We start out here, fifty miles south of the road, and where it lands, over here, near Dodge City, is over a hundred miles south of it'

‘What about Dodge City?'

‘There's a little man with a switch, hired solely to push that switch and bring step five down in open country. If he makes a mistake, they tie him to a tree and let wild dogs tear him to pieces. Don't worry, Mom. Step four lands around here, off the coast of South Carolina. Step three lands in the Atlantic north of this narrowest plane where the nose of South America faces the bulge of Africa. Step two lands in the South Atlantic near Capetown. If it goes too far, we'll hear some interesting cussing in Afrikaans. Step one - ah, that's the one. With luck it lands on the Moon. If Bob Coster made a mistake, why, it's back to the old drawing-board.'

It will be no news to anyone that Pioneer lifted off to plan and that Captain Leslie LeCroix landed on Luna and returned safely. I watched from Cheyenne Mountain, the zoo parking lot, with such a fine, horizon-wide view to the east that it seemed to me that I could stand on my tip-toes and sec Kansas City.

I'm glad that I got to sec one of the great rockets while they were still in use - I know of no planet in any patrolled universe where the big rockets are still used - too expensive, too wasteful, too dangerous.

But, oh, so magnificent!

It was just dark when I got up there. The full Moon was rising in the east. The Pioneer was seven miles away (I heard someone say) but the ship was easy to see, bathed in floodlights and standing tall and proud.

I looked at my chrono, then watched the blockhouse through binoculars. A white flare burst from its top, right on time.

Another flare split into red and green fireball. Five minutes.

That five minutes was at least a half-hour long. I was beginning to think that the launching was going to abort - and I felt unbearable grief.

White fire lapped out of the base of the ship and slowly, lumberingly, it lifted off the pad... and climbed faster and faster and faster and the whole landscape, miles and miles, was suddenly in bright sunlight!

Up, up, and up, to apparent zenith and it seemed to have bent back to the west and I thought it was falling on us - and then the light was not quite as bright and now we could see that this ‘sun' overhead was moving east... and was a moving bright star. It seemed to break up and a voice from a radio said, ‘Step five has separated.' I remembered to breathe.

And the sound reached us. How many seconds does it take sound to go seven miles? I've forgotten and, anyhow, they weren't using ordinary seconds that night.

It was ‘white' noise, almost unbearable even at that distance. It rumbled on and on... and at last the turbulence reached us, whipping skirts and knocking over chairs. Someone fell, down, cursed, and said, ‘I'm going to sue somebody!'

Man was on his way to the Moon. His first step to his Only Home -

George died in 1971. He lived to see every cent paid back, Pikes Peak Space Catapult operational, Luna City a going concern with over six hundred inhabitants, more than a hundred of them women, and some babies born there - and Harriman Industries richer than ever. I think he was happy. I know I miss him, still.

I'm not sure Mr Harriman was happy. He was not looking for billions; he simply wanted to go to the Moon - and Daniel Dixon euchred him out of it.

In the complex manoeuvrings that got a man to the Moon Dixon wound up controlling more shares of voting stock than Mr Harriman controlled, and Mr Harriman lost control of Harriman Industries.

On top of that, in lobbying manoeuvres in Washington and in the United Nations, a Harriman daughter firm, Spaceways Ltd, became the ‘chosen instrument' for the early development of space, with a rule, The Space Precautionary Act, under which the company controlled who could go into space. I heard that Mr Harriman had been turned down physically, under this rule. I'm not certain what went on behind the scenes; I was eased off the board of directors once Mr Dixon was in control. I didn't mind; I didn't like Dixon.

In Boondock, centuries later or about sixty-odd years ago on my personal time line, I listened to a cube Myths, Legends, and Traditions - The Romantic Side of History. There was a tale in it concerning time line two that asserted that the legendary D. D. Harriman had managed, many years later, when he was very old and almost forgotten, to buy a pirate rocket, in which he finally made it to the Moon... there to die in a bad landing. But on the Moon, where he longed to be.

I asked Lazarus about this. He said that he did not know. ‘But it's possible. God knows the Old Man was stubborn.'

I hope he made it.